Is It Wise to Create Multiple Essay Drafts?

An essay is an assignment that many students dread starting. Students will wait till the evening before and turn in a piece that meets a word or page requirement without allowing themselves ample time to revise or edit. Some students claim they can write their best material under pressure, but most of the time essays turned in under these conditions are packed with grammar and punctuation mistakes, poor structure, and a number of other elements of poor writing that could have been avoided by writing multiple drafts.

Why is Writing Multiple Essay Drafts So Important?

Writing is a creative task that requires repetitive thought, reading, and writing. As you go through the writing process new issues arise at every stage, requiring you to make corrections to your essay. Your end result could be very different from the original plan. A first draft is usually a longer, disorganized form of your collected thoughts on a particular subject. This draft will have a number of structural, logical and argumentative mistakes.

How to Effectively Write Multiple Essay Drafts?

Your first draft should be an extension of your outline. At this stage you shouldn’t worry about grammar or spelling. Instead, you should write freely and include as much content you can think of on a particular subject. Set your first draft aside for at least a day so that you have a clear mind when you return to your essay.

Before continuing on your essay print out your first draft so that you can revise with pen and paper in hand and look for ways to reorganize your essay. Make sure your thesis is clear and well-written and located in the introduction. You should also look to remove content that is unrelated to your content.

Start your second draft using your notes and start paying attention to style. Look for words or phrases that you never use in real life and cut them out. Big and fancy words are distracting and often used incorrectly so be sure you use straightforward language to make your argument. Refer to a style guide for assistance. Combine short sentences for better flow, and look to separate very long sentences into two effective sentences.

Print out another copy and repeat the entire revision and proofreading process. Your mistakes will be smaller and could go unnoticed the first time, so be sure to read at the sentence level to make these corrections. Repeat this steps until you are happy with your essay, and give yourself enough time to take breaks while editing.